You Must Remember This

Tuesday, 12 April 2016

KNIGHT OF CUPS

After
deciding not to commit any more time or words, written or otherwise, to analysing
and dissecting Batman V Superman, I find comparisons to Zack Snyder’s crap-ton opus
cropping up in the most unlikely of places – namely the work of a (once)
genuinely visionary director.

Knight
of Cups is a film you could drown in – a vast thematic ocean lapping against the distant shore of some grand, obscure vision; and apparently I don’t have any swimming
trunks. As a director-philosopher (or should that be philosopher-director?),
Terrence Malick has always experimented with the medium, but his latest work
seems to mark the crossing of a conceptual Rubicon.

Where 2011’s Tree of Life –
a genuine masterpiece – encapsulated the brevity and preciousness of human
experience by juxtaposing the private grief of an All-American family in ‘50s
Texas with the origins of the universe (over almost two and a half hours no
less), Knight of Cups eschews such contrivances as plot and character almost
entirely.

Following
an itinerant screenwriter, Rick (Christian Bale), around Los Angeles and its surrounding
environs, the film is directly engaged in a search for meaning and so diligently
wades through meaninglessness. Malick’s camera drifts close behind the silently
watchful Rick as he makes his way through lavish parties, down skid row, across
desert flats, even via the Paramount backlot; switching occasionally to Rick’s
POV as if to say, “This is you, you wanderer, you pilgrim.”

Even an earthquake
and a minor home invasion can’t shake our nomadic protagonist out of his
reverie – or, Heaven forbid, prompt him to pick up a pen. Rick isn’t so much
character as camera; the frame through which Malick unfurls this gauzy
tapestry.

Less
cinema than poetry told through images, Knight of Cups is replete with literary
quotations – from The Pilgrim's Progress, from the apocryphal Hymn of the Pearl
– but there is nothing at the centre of Malick's quest; no pearl, no progress, no
common nucleus of human experience. There’s experience aplenty – kissing,
running into the sea fully clothed, luminous body paint – Spring Break as high
art – but no more significance to any of it than a handful of holiday snapshots.

Repetition should lend meaning – a man cycling along a boulevard (different
man, different boulevard) – but these
images provide no key in or out. The film’s ending, when it comes, arrives
abruptly and without apparent foreshadowing.

Characters
pass like ships in the light – Cate Blanchett as Rick’s physician ex-wife;
Teresa Palmer as the “High Priestess” stripper; Rick’s bullish father (Brian
Dennehy) and volatile brother (Wes Bentley).1 It’s clear by the level of talent
– no fewer than four Oscar winners are involved onscreen and off – that Malick’s
vision is alluring.

Natalie Portman, who plays ‘Death’ AKA Elizabeth2 and
attended Malick’s alma mater, Harvard, must have seen something in the
fragmentary pages of script that, to my eye, certainly doesn’t survive . You’d
never know of Malick’s practice of “torpedoing” — unexpectedly throwing cast
members into scenes to force improvisation — because no real conflict reaches
the surface.

Knight
of Cups could play on a loop at a modern art installation without much loss.3 The
patrons could pause momentarily to glean what they can from Emmanuel Lubezki’s radiant
cinematography – bright, pale, and naturally lit, of course4 – or one of
Malick’s cryptic snatches of voiceover – the rows of palm trees that line the
L.A boulevards tell us, for instance, that anything’s possible – before simply
moving on.5

This is perhaps the only film that I wish they’d provided
SparkNotes for going in; a handy how-to guide of reference points and symbolism.
After almost two hours I almost, perversely, wished it would go on longer, just
in the hope that it might all come together in one revelatory burst - alas.

In
his review for The New York Times, Richard Brody described Knight of Cups in
terms of “the confessional, the inside-Hollywood story, the Dantesque
midlife-crisis drama, the religious quest, the romantic struggle, the sexual
reverie, the family melodrama” – but, while all of these undercurrents are
undoubtedly present, none of them have any hold.

The film is all in the
motion, like the breaking of waves; the journey rather than any single arrival or conversation. In this it
resembles a 118-minute version of Sean Penn’s present-day perambulations in
Tree of Life – reverently wandering between skyscrapers and riding in lifts as
though travel were somehow the essence of meaning instead of a necessary
transition between point A and point B.6 The film has so little actual
structure to it, regardless of what the chapter headings proclaim, that just
finding a rhythm to this review has, perhaps obviously, been challenging.7

Dealing
with recurring themes in Malick’s work, like the death of a brother, this feels
less like cinema than indulgence, therapy even, that, like Woody Allen and his
recent travelogues – which are at least entertaining – is difficult to dismiss
as navel-gazing simply because the navel in question is so remarkably well
composed. Those few impressions that linger – the jaws of a dog, plunging
futilely into a pool to recover a lost toy – endure only as curios; detached,
adrift from that work that should encompass them.

Perversely,
the film Knight of Cups most reminds me of is Batman V Superman - which,
despite its subtitle, did justice to nothing and no one.8 Where that was too narrative-driven,
this is slight; where that was too dark, all matte and gloss, this is light;
where that was categorically shit, this is, well… wank. At least the
former has the decency to be bad; this is just ephemeral.9 What films like BVS
and KoC10 do, though, is make you appreciate tightly structured, disciplined
cinema.11

Knight of Cups is a film for which I've seen more than one positive
review use words like "indecipherable" and "imponderable".
Now, I can handle a certain amount of poetic obscurity,12 but, forgive me for
being old-fashioned, I like my films to make sense.

One of Rick's myriad lovers – possibly Imogen Poots13 – informs him, "You're not looking for love. You're looking for a love
experience." Knight of Cups is not a film but a cinematic experience; one
that'll either sweep you away or leave you marooned, as it did me.

The only
reason I can't dismiss it out of hand is the lingering sense that maybe I
missed something, that I was looking too closely (or else not closely enough)
and the film's self-evident transcendence somehow got slipped between my
bifocals. What was for me a tedious experience might well prove a transcendent one
for you. Try as I did to engage, my latch was clearly broken.

Ponderous
and imponderable, and, like its protagonist, easily led, Knight of Cups gets a
4.0 out of 10

2
Knight of Cups is divided into eight chapter, all named, as the film itself is,
for tarot cards. After ‘Death’, fortunately, comes ‘Freedom’ – were it ‘Rebirth’
I might have been obliged to sit through the whole thing again.

3
The film is a canvas onto which you are almost obliged to project your own
feelings, your own interpretations. Unfortunately I’ve never had the opportunity
to bum around the L.A. party scene with a bevy of beauties on my arm and a
seemingly inexhaustible wallet; otherwise I may have found Rick’s evident
satisfaction with his lot in life a bit more relatable.

4
What is it with Lubezki and films I don’t quite get on with (even if they are
Best Picture winners)? I liked Gravitybut didn’t adore it as much as
American Hustle; Birdman was fun and superficially profound, but I didn't even end up reviewing it. As for The Revenant…

6
You can count the moments of actual “drama” in Knight of Cups on the fingers of
one fist. At one point I think Wes Bentley actually throws something. It very
nearly startled me awake.

7
Hence the footnotes you are currently
reading. The main body is for you; these are more or less just to help me work
through any extraneous thoughts.

8
And that’s my last word on it – I promise.

9
Tightly wound films like, say Whiplash,
which I haven’t seen since October 2014 and loved so much on girst viewing that
I’m afraid to open my BluRay copy in case it somehow tarnishes the memory.

10
Malick’s next film, shot back to back with Knight of Cups, is actually called Weightless, but it’s hard to imagine it can be less substantial than
this.

11
Okay one more parting shot: BVS is very close to IBS and KoC is a similarlyinspired
acronym.

12
Carol Morley's The Falling
was one of my favourites of 2015; a film no less ambitious in its own way for its commitment to actually
telling a story.

13
It is actually Imogen Poots. She’s called Della in the film – at least that’s what
Wikipedia tells me – but for all intents and purposes she’s Imogen Poots. Antonio
Banderas is charming and dances. Blanchet brings both fragility and strength in
a minor role whose character motivations are provided explicitly via voiceover.
Bale just looks about fixedly, occasionally giving a dopy grin or knowing smirk. “Hollow”
characters can be fascinating – just see Nightcrawler or Bale himself in
American Psycho – but there’s not even any pretence here.

About Me

BA in English and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London; MA in Screenwriting from the London Film School. Formerly Film & TV Editor for London-based culture site The Metropolist (www.themetropolist.com) and Official Sidekick (Assistant Editor) of superhero site A Place to Hang Your Cape (www.ap2hyc.com). Currently member of the Online Film Critics Society (http://www.ofcs.org/robert-wallis/). Follow me on Twitter @robertmwallis or on Facebook at Of All the Film Blogs (https://www.facebook.com/OfAllTheFilmBlogs?fref=ts).